In late 2016, the U.S. defense establishment arrived at a consensus: with just 275 frontline ships, the U.S. Navy was too small to maintain a forward presence across the world’s oceans, deter Russia and China and support combat operations in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
Both the Obama administration and the future Trump administration endorsed a new goal of around 350 ships. The U.S. Congress codified a 355-ship Navy in the 2018 defense authorization act. By mid-2018, the idea of a bigger fleet enjoyed widespread support across the U.S. political and military establishments.
But turning the idea of a bigger fleet into an actual bigger fleet has proved difficult, at best. One Congressional shipbuilding expert actually insisted, on condition of anonymity, that quickly growing the Navy by 75 ships simply by buying new vessels “would be impossible.”